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e seen that he had burst into a violent passion.
He had afterward dissembled. Promising, at last, that they should all
be sent from the country within three or four months after his departure,
he had determined to use every artifice to detain them in the provinces.
He had succeeded, by various subterfuges, in keeping them there fourteen
months; but it was at last evident that their presence would no longer be
tolerated. Towards the close of 1560 they were quartered in Walcheren
and Brill. The Zelanders, however, had become so exasperated by their
presence that they resolutely refused to lay a single hand upon the
dykes, which, as usual at that season, required great repairs. Rather
than see their native soil profaned any longer by these hated foreign
mercenaries, they would see it sunk forever in the ocean. They swore to
perish-men, women, and children together-in the waves, rather than endure
longer the outrages which the soldiery daily inflicted. Such was the
temper of the Zelanders that it was not th